Re: Boy Scouts make people nervous

"Evil Shaman" <parker7273@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1142892039.914071.135030@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

hal@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 20 Mar 2006 11:38:53 -0800, "Evil Shaman" <parker7273@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

If an opponent dodges right or left, 50% of the time he will dodge
left, 50% of the time he will dodge right. Right?

Not necessarily no. What makes you think each direction has an equal
probability of occurring? Do you know of any actual surveys or studies
backing this up? Do you know for a fact that hand dominance doesn't
play a role for instance?

No I do not know that.

Then you probably shouldn't state it as fact.

Evil Shaman has performed the Dance of 1000 Monkeys on the correct.

In lieu of such information, you cannot assume
it will skew your results, therefore cannot assume a change without
sampling.

Assume a change from what? In lieu of information you cannot assume
any probability. You just don't know.

Bingbingbingbing. Evil Shaman has performed the Righteous Toe of Death
on the correct.

Now on the other hand, if in fact, dominance did have a
correlation to direction, and we knew that, and we knew the opps
dominance, then we would have adequate information to make a more
accuract prediction.

Really? Sounds like that might make an interesting topic of
discussion. Kirk should put it in his WOTT list.

Um.

Since we don't know that, we must assume equal
likihood of occurance.

Even a coin toss isn't necessarily 50/50. I'm pretty sure I read
somewhere that there is like a 1% bias in favor of it landing on the
same side it was flipped from.

Yes, true, in the case of a real coin, but the variance in the real
coin is not really significant because the coin is simply being used
as the most common of the two outcome model.

The "fair coin" is used as an example of equal probability. Having two
outcomes does not necessarily mean equal probability.

Isn't it interesting that even the classic "example" given of the two
outcome model doesn't actually have 50/50 probability. Yet hal continues to
insist that a two outcome system _must_ be assumed to have a 50/50
probability.

I you want to keep it
exact, have a dummy coin exactly balanced, then it will be exactly
50-50 over an adequate sample size. The bigger the sample, the less
your error.

You will also need to randomize the "flipping" input as well since at
this scale the path of the coin is completely deterministic (may be chaotic,
but even "chaos," in this context, isn't the same thing as "random").

Yes, it is right, and if you do an adequate sample size, that WILL be
you're result, because both have an equal probability of occuring,
therefore they will be equal.

You know this for an absolute fact how?

Because probabilities tells us it will:

P(event)= The number of ways an event can occur
/The Total Number Of Possible Outcomes

You don't know that they have an equal possibility of occurring because
you don't know the distribution of outcomes. For example, if their are
blue and red marbles in the jar, seven red and three blue, there are
two outcomes but the probability of which one you will draw is not
50/50. It is 70/30. the greater your sampling the closer, you will
get to 70/30, not 50/50.

This has already been mentioned to hal several times. Maybe you'll have
more luck than I have, but I doubt it.

In the dodging example, you can't even assume 2 possible outcomes. For
example on outcome could be a right hander dodging right, another a
left hander dodging right. Or maybe you have a male, left hander
dodging left against an incoming left hand jab. There are tons of
possible outcomes. If you just want to calculate right or left, you
have to have an idea how many times right or left occurs over all the
various possible outcomes.

This, too, has been mentioned to hal.

--
David L. Burkhead "Dum Vivimus Vivamus"
mailto:dburkhead@xxxxxxxxxxx "While we live, let us live."
My webcomic Cold Servings
http://www.coldservings.com
Updates Wednesdays



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